[00:00] This, my friends, is a solid 2,432-karat white&nbsp; sapphire crystal. And you might be like, "Hey,&nbsp;&nbsp; Jerry, how did you get your hands on six inches&nbsp; of rock-hard, scratch-proof sapphire?" That's a&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:17] great question, and I'm going to need you not to&nbsp; ask so many questions. While six inches is far&nbsp;&nbsp; above average, it actually is nowhere near the&nbsp; largest man-made sapphire block in existence.&nbsp;&nbsp; There's a company called Arc Energy&nbsp; that makes a 65,000-karat boule of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:33] sapphire that weighs 660 lbs. The boule&nbsp; is nearly two feet wide and one foot tall,&nbsp;&nbsp; and it has enough white sapphire&nbsp; inside to make 4,000 smartphone covers.
[00:45] Which brings us to today's victim: the new&nbsp; Red Magic Astra gaming tablet Golden Saga,&nbsp;&nbsp; which uses this level-eight scratch-proof&nbsp; sapphire crystal and real gold as some of&nbsp;&nbsp; its ultra-premium, top-of-the-line materials&nbsp; inside the most luxurious gaming tablet on&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:00] the planet. I'll give this tablet away&nbsp; to one of you at the end of this video. Today, we're going to take my sacrificial sapphire&nbsp; and show how it might be cut up and transformed&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:13] into something useful. Since most level-eight or&nbsp; level-nine scratch-proof screens are exceptionally&nbsp;&nbsp; superior, we can find examples of sapphire crystal&nbsp; on watch faces, the backs of phones, and sometimes&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:25] even on phone screens. The problem is , though,&nbsp; is that the only thing on the planet that will cut&nbsp;&nbsp; scratch-proof level-nine sapphire is a level-10&nbsp; diamond. We'll get to that part in a second. The other rock here on my desk is actually&nbsp; fossilized dinosaur poop called coprolite.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:41] It doesn't have anything to do with sapphire; I&nbsp; just wanted some dinosaur poop on my desk just&nbsp;&nbsp; for fun. Thumbs up for that. Anyway, aside from&nbsp; having real sapphire on their Astra gaming tablet,&nbsp;&nbsp; Red Magic also sent me a new limited edition&nbsp; Red Magic 11 Pro Golden Saga gaming phone,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:58] which supposedly also has real sapphire&nbsp; on the back. The sapphire covers the new&nbsp;&nbsp; golden liquid cooling loop, and it has a&nbsp; literal gold-plated internal vapor chamber,&nbsp;&nbsp; which means we've got to do what we&nbsp; always do and verify those claims.
[02:14] Let's start with how the sapphire is cut.&nbsp; Diamond saws are actually pretty common on&nbsp;&nbsp; construction sites. You can get diamond blades&nbsp; like this one for about 20 bucks at Home Depot;&nbsp;&nbsp; they handle cutting tile or granite countertops.&nbsp; This saw, however, is specific to lapidary work.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:30] As you can see, the diamond dust, or grit, is&nbsp; fine enough to be embedded into the edge of&nbsp;&nbsp; the blade. As the metal holding the diamond dust&nbsp; wears away, new diamonds are exposed, making it&nbsp;&nbsp; a self-sharpening system. Since the diamond dust&nbsp; is microscopic, the saw blade itself has no teeth&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:47] to damage my fingers with. I can touch the blade&nbsp; while it's still spinning and still count to ten. As you can see, the level-10 diamond dust&nbsp; in the blade is making short work of our&nbsp;&nbsp; level-nine sapphire boule. The main thing we&nbsp; have to watch out for is the boule cracking.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:01] Since sapphire boules are created at around&nbsp; 2,000°C, there's a lot of brittle stress&nbsp;&nbsp; built up on the inside. You might have noticed&nbsp; that the tip of my boule has been broken off.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is where the seed crystal originally was.&nbsp; The seed crystal is kind of like the blueprint&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:16] from which the rest of the crystal grows. Aluminum&nbsp; oxide dust is melted down over the seed crystal,&nbsp;&nbsp; and as the new liquid cools, it&nbsp; orients itself into a crystalline&nbsp;&nbsp; form based on how the original seed crystal&nbsp; was placed—kind of like cloning or an icicle.
[03:32] What takes millions of years to happen&nbsp; naturally below ground can happen in&nbsp;&nbsp; just a few hours here high above ground with,&nbsp; of course, the right equipment and scientific&nbsp;&nbsp; know-how. It does take about a week to slowly&nbsp; cool the boule back to ambient temperature,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:45] though. The slow cooldown process helps reduce&nbsp; internal stress and subsequent fracturing, since&nbsp;&nbsp; a fractured boule wouldn't be very useful when&nbsp; cutting out screens, back panels, or watch faces.
[03:57] With our sapphire cut, you can see it's not&nbsp; totally clear. This is where polishing comes&nbsp;&nbsp; in. We have a range of diamond-laminated grinding&nbsp; wheels ranging from 80-grit to 3,000-grit. The&nbsp;&nbsp; higher the number, the finer the polishing diamond&nbsp; grit. As the grit gets finer, the scratches are&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:14] reduced, turning our sapphire into an optical&nbsp; lens. A more industrial setup, like the one Red&nbsp;&nbsp; Magic uses on their Golden Saga sapphire devices,&nbsp; could get the crystal even more optically clear&nbsp;&nbsp; than we have here. Ultra-fine aluminum oxide dust&nbsp; can get up to 20,000-grit or higher, but you get&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:31] the point. Industrial sapphire cutters also use&nbsp; high-end lasers to get their exact dimensions. Sapphire is pretty cool. Keep in mind, though,&nbsp; never to call it "sapphire glass," since they&nbsp;&nbsp; have very different elemental structures,&nbsp; hardnesses, and values. Sapphire glass&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:46] would just be blue-tinted glass, and sapphire&nbsp; crystal might look like glass, but it's actually&nbsp;&nbsp; a gloriously premium, jewel-grade gemstone,&nbsp; and we should put some respect on its name. but here we are. I wouldn't have it any other way.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:04] Hopefully, the sapphire crystal on the back&nbsp; of the Red Magic 11 Pro Golden Saga holds up&nbsp;&nbsp; to the hype that I just generated. Inside&nbsp; the box, we get our external cooling unit,&nbsp;&nbsp; which can drop the temperature of your cooling&nbsp; loop by 18 degrees. Everything about this phone&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:19] is overkill, including the 80W charging brick.&nbsp; We also have two USB-C charging cables—because&nbsp;&nbsp; why not—a carbon fiber case, also literal&nbsp; gold-plated SIM card removal tool, and an&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:31] individualized gold-plated collector's card.&nbsp; My number is 297, so it's a pretty rare device. The cooling loop on the back is the same&nbsp; liquid-filled pump that we found on the&nbsp;&nbsp; normal non-gold-plated version of the 11 Pro&nbsp; that we durability tested earlier this year,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:46] except now the liquid is gold instead&nbsp; of blue. We'll get a closer look at&nbsp;&nbsp; all the gold on the inside, but&nbsp; first: the sapphire scratch test. A plastic- or fiberglass-backed smartphone&nbsp; would scratch at a level two or three on&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:00] the Mohs scale of hardness. Regular&nbsp; glass would scratch at a five or six,&nbsp;&nbsp; and real sapphire crystal would scratch at&nbsp; a level eight or nine. Diamonds, of course,&nbsp;&nbsp; are level 10. Just like we expected, we don't&nbsp; see any scratches until a Mohs 8. Red Magic&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:15] is indeed using real sapphire crystal on the back&nbsp; of their Golden Saga smartphone. Very impressive. Now, one thing that makes this teardown&nbsp; much more difficult is that sapphire has&nbsp;&nbsp; a thermal conductivity 40 times higher than&nbsp; regular glass. So, as I try to soften the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:31] glue holding this watertight phone together,&nbsp; the crystal is so good at getting rid of heat&nbsp;&nbsp; that it cools itself down before I have a chance&nbsp; to lift the crystal off. This is extremely good&nbsp;&nbsp; for gaming but bad for taking phones apart.&nbsp; I'm using a new tool from iFixit called the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:46] "Clampy" anti-clamp, which should help me&nbsp; get the back sapphire off in one piece. Sapphire is impervious to scratches, but&nbsp; it can still shatter like glass if it's&nbsp;&nbsp; ever dropped. The marks you see on the&nbsp; underside of the sapphire is just the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:59] aesthetic tinting getting rubbed away by&nbsp; my tool. And look at that—Clampy got the&nbsp;&nbsp; sapphire off in one piece. I'll put&nbsp; this sapphire down with the rest of&nbsp;&nbsp; my sapphires. You know your desk is cool when&nbsp; it's covered in sapphires and dinosaur poop.
[07:13] Where was I? Ah, yes. The coolest part&nbsp; of the Red Magic 11 Pro Golden Saga,&nbsp;&nbsp; aside from the golden sapphire, is the&nbsp; cooling loop. Under the carbon fiber sheet,&nbsp;&nbsp; we can see the full loop in all of its glory. We&nbsp; see the liquid flowing around inside the loop,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:27] dissipating heat from the gold-and-silver air duct&nbsp; up top. I can feel the piezoelectric pump at the&nbsp;&nbsp; bottom vibrating through my fingertips.&nbsp; I'll pop the microphone cover off of my&nbsp;&nbsp; microphone so you can hear the vibrations for&nbsp; yourself. She's humming along rather nicely.
[07:49] To get to the golden vapor chamber, though, we&nbsp; need to remove the nineteen T4 Torx screws holding&nbsp;&nbsp; down the back hardware. Then we can lift up the&nbsp; gold-and-silver alloy air duct and cooling loop.&nbsp;&nbsp; Red Magic has had cooling fans inside their&nbsp; gaming smartphones since the early days,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:04] but only with this 11 Pro have they managed&nbsp; to make the whole thing IPX8 watertight,&nbsp;&nbsp; meaning the fan itself is waterproof. Air&nbsp; is allowed to flow through the air duct,&nbsp;&nbsp; so water, of course, would be able to enter as&nbsp; well; however, the duct itself is sealed off&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:18] from the rest of the phone. For some reason,&nbsp; it definitely has gold plating on the inside.&nbsp;&nbsp; There's probably not a single other person on the&nbsp; planet who would actually check for gold inside&nbsp;&nbsp; of the air duct except for me, but Red Magic&nbsp; actually did it, just like they said they would.
[08:33] Here is also where we can see the mesh that&nbsp; lets the air and water flow through the vent,&nbsp;&nbsp; while the red gasket keeps the liquid from&nbsp; entering the rest of the electronics inside of&nbsp;&nbsp; the phone. Speaking of which, I'll unplug the&nbsp; massive 7,500 mAh battery. It's got more than&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:48] twice the capacity of an iPhone 17—but&nbsp; who's counting? It also has pull tabs,&nbsp;&nbsp; but the glue does need a bit of extra&nbsp; persuasion from my pry tool to let loose.
[09:00] With the battery gone, we can start to get&nbsp; a glimpse of our golden vapor chamber. I'll&nbsp;&nbsp; remove one more screw holding the motherboard&nbsp; and pop that out so we can get a better look&nbsp;&nbsp; at Red Magic's gold. Now, gold-plating the vapor&nbsp; chamber probably doesn't help all that much with&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:14] actual thermal conductivity, since gold moves&nbsp; basically the same amount of heat as copper.&nbsp;&nbsp; But where gold excels is being literally immune&nbsp; to atmospheric oxidation. If you remember Lady&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:26] Liberty here in the USA—may she rest in peace—she&nbsp; was originally made out of shiny copper but has&nbsp;&nbsp; since turned green due to atmospheric oxidation.&nbsp; Which, once copper is oxidized or tarnished,&nbsp;&nbsp; that layer acts as a thermal barrier. So, the&nbsp; reason electronics get gold-plated is to keep&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:42] them clean and useful for longer. Still&nbsp; pretty wild that France would just gift&nbsp;&nbsp; us a whole statue. To be fair, though, her&nbsp; torch is gold-plated, which is kind of cool. And look at that—everything still works,&nbsp; including the liquid cooling. I'm a big&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:58] fan of Red Magic. They're pushing boundaries and&nbsp; trying new things where everyone else appears to&nbsp;&nbsp; have given up. Instead of taking the new Red&nbsp; Magic Astra gaming tablet Golden Saga apart,&nbsp;&nbsp; I've decided to give it away. It has the&nbsp; same sapphire and gold-plated internals as&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:12] the smartphone. Let me know your favorite TV show&nbsp; or YouTube channel down in the comments (besides&nbsp;&nbsp; mine, obviously), and I'll pick a random&nbsp; winner from anywhere in the world. Current&nbsp;&nbsp; pricing for the limited editions is down in the&nbsp; description. It's actually pretty reasonable,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:26] all things considered. Thanks a ton&nbsp; for watching. I'll see you around.